More Things In Heaven And Earth

Chapter One

I always dreaded this part. The boys rushed onward to the playground. I looked around. I didn't know any of the women who were lining the benches, talking in little groups, or gazing into their smart phones while rocking strollers with their toes. They all seemed so content and certain of their places in the social hierarchy. I had never been the type of person to sit down next to a stranger and make conversation, for fear they would think me weird. I thought I was weird, so it was only logical.

In the grassy area just east of the playground, a young woman with the longest, most golden braid I'd ever seen sat in the lotus position, face to the sun, looking more serene than I had ever been. I watched her for a moment, trying to absorb some of her peace. As I stood there, I realized that the day was even warmer than I'd thought and shrugged off my jacket. A low wooden border circled the play area. I sat, stretching out my legs to let the sunshine do its work in melting the winter's brutal frost from the marrow of my bones.

Maybe it was because I'd become so accustomed to the never-ending noise. Maybe it was because I was exhausted, or maybe it was that the park was so busy. He was just another solid form among dozens of solid forms, but I never heard the man, or saw him approach. Although, as he sat next to me, I felt him. Energy buzzed all around him, making the tiny hairs on my arms stand up. My entire body tensed. I won't look at you, I thought. You're not real. You're not part of my world. You need to go.

"Being real and being part of your world aren't mutually exclusive." He spoke aloud in answer to my thoughts.

His voice washed over me. The earth trembled at the sound of it. The deep, resonant beauty overwhelmed me. My heart raced. Unwilling tears sprang to my eyes. The ache in my head intensified to a sharp, stabbing pain. The sound paralyzed me, crushing me beneath its enormity. I was accustomed to bothersome voices in my mind, but nothing like this had happened to me before.

"Please don't!" I whimpered. "You need to go. Please go." I said all of this without looking at him. I refused to acknowledge him in that way.

He made no motion to leave, but he drew back. He became less. His energy pulled away from me, and the flooding tidal wave of emotion receded with it.

"Simone," he said.

He had an exceptional voice. It could have belonged to a great actor or singer. I begged him silently, you need to leave. Please go. Please leave me alone.

"I need you to hear me, Simone." He hesitated. "Please." He spoke the word like it was far from familiar to him.

I watched Donovan. He was Iron Man, running with two other boys who were, no doubt, also members of The Avengers. Ike sat on a swing, pumping his little legs furiously in attempt at getting as high as the big kids. He wouldn't ask me to push him. He was far too independent for that. Everything was OK. Everything was normal. I was OK. All of this was real. I faced the man sitting next to me.

He appeared to be just a man: a gorgeous, tall, broad-shouldered man with flawless mahogany skin and extraordinary green eyes. He wore jeans and a navy blue hoodie. He could have stepped out of an advertisement for a popular urban clothing store.

"It is very important that you hear what I have to say to you. I swear I will not deceive you," he promised me.

Something in the deepest part of me was coming unraveled. How could no one see my slow disintegration? Perhaps they saw and just didn't care. I chewed on my lower lip and watched the children playing. I wanted to be normal. I shouldn't listen to him or hear what he had to tell me. My head ached. I was so tired.

He put a gentle hand on my shoulder and his good power flowed over and through me. A lightness unlike anything I'd ever known filled me, banishing pain and fatigue. I sighed from the sheer pleasure of such physical comfort. A flood of information poured into me. I knew the woman on the bench nearest to me was named Jennifer. She was thirty two years old and having an affair with her lawn boy who had just turned nineteen. The lawn boy was a descendant of Alexander the Great and a miller's daughter. I knew there was a child named Gregory on the see-saw. He had peed his pants twelve minutes ago, but no one had noticed yet. The sun would set at 7:43. There were exactly one hundred, thirty eight birds in the park, if you counted the four that would hatch later in the afternoon. I knew the birth date of every person on the playground. Of the seventeen moms there, six had lost a child to miscarriage, and one had once had an abortion without informing her husband. I knew the braided beauty doing yoga was older than the human race, and the warmth I'd sensed in that part of the park radiated out from her. I started, and glanced back at her. She smiled at me. I knew so many things, and I knew I would listen to what he had to tell me.